


First Snowfall

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Family, First snowfall, Fluff to Melt Your Heart, Fun, Gen, Mischief, Siblings, Sledding, midnight adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 02:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12973317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: For Roald and Kally, the first snowfall of the season is magical.





	First Snowfall

First Snowfall 

“Roald.” It was the middle of a cold winter’s night where the wind howled against the stone walls. At first, Roald thought that was what had drawn him from his dream of snow and sledding, but then he felt the sharp shake of his shoulder by an excited hand accompanied by an even more eager whisper. “Are you awake?” 

“I am now.” Groggily rubbing sleep from his eyes with his fists, Roald squinted through the darkness engulfing his bedchamber to see his seven-year-old sister’s face glowing like the full moon outside his window with some uncontainable joy. “What’s made you so happy, Kally?” 

He thought about adding irritably that it had better be truly exhilarating if she was waking him up in the middle of a good dream, but he loved his closest sister—not just in age, but in every way that mattered—too much to be a grouch with her. He was her big brother (the only one she had), and he would never stomp on her spirit because in a way she was all the passion he dared not express. A heir, he thought, had to take everything seriously and always be strictly on his best behavior, which left little room for flights of fantasy unless Kally carried him away on hers. 

“It’s snowing, Roald.” Kally jolted his mattress as she bounced up and down on his bed. Jabbing a finger at the glass door that opened onto his balcony, she urged, “Look, there’s at least five inches!” 

Assuming Kally wasn’t exaggerating as she was prone to doing when excited, this would be the first snowfall of the season—Roald didn’t count the snows that melted as soon as they hit the ground because the world was too warm for them (or so the tutors said when he asked why some snow accumulated in banks and some vanished without leaving a single snowflake behind)—and there was always something magical in that. Driven to see the snow for himself, he raced out of bed, his feet moving too fast to feel the cold that seeped from the stone floor through the carpet, with Kally on his heels. 

His breath caught in his throat as he stared out at the shimmering silver snow stringing from the trees like Midwinter ornaments and blanketing the courtyard below. Everything was so beautiful and peaceful that Roald wanted to jar this moment like a preserve so that he could hold onto it forever. He didn’t even want to disturb it by exhaling. 

Regardless of his wishes, he had to release his breath eventually, and when he did, it misted the glass, clouding his view of the snow turning his world into a winter wonderland. 

“I could feel it snowing.” Kally swirled a finger through the fog their breath left on the glass, creating her own snowflakes. Roald suspected it was more likely that she had rose to use the privy and realized it was snowing as she returned to her bed, but the tutors said it was rude to mention such vulgar bodily functions, so Roald didn’t challenge her story. “I had to get out of bed to see if it was, and I was right.” Seizing his wrist and tugging him toward his closet, she added in a rush, “Let’s go sledding.” 

“We can’t,” Roald protested, but he could feel his resolve crumbling like a sand castle swallowed by the sea at Port Caynn as she flung open his closet door. He could see his sled, which hadn’t been used since March. He could hear the wooden runners and rope string calling to him, begging to slide across the snow after being cooped up in his closet for months. The blood in his veins longed to answer the call but his brain remained in control of his mouth as he continued to Kally, “If Mama and Papa catch us out of bed when we’re supposed to be sleeping, they’ll…” 

He trailed off, unable to identify exactly what punishment their parents would inflict upon them if they were caught sledding hours after they were supposed to be abed. 

Utterly unfazed by this vague warning, Kally shrugged. “They aren’t going to catch us. They’re too busy attending the party for the new Tusaine ambassador to bother with us. As long as we don’t set fire to the palace, they won’t ever know we’re out of bed.” 

That was too good a point, or too bad a one, since it was leading Roald into mischief. He couldn’t or didn’t want to argue it, so he grabbed his sled from the shelf where it was stowed. Then he threw on boots, a woolen cloak, gloves, and a hat before tossing spare pairs at Kally, since he wasn’t about to let her get frostbite running around outside in only her nightdress. 

Everything he lent her was too large, and she looked more like a court jester than a princess with the gloves drooping off her fingers, the hat slipping over her eyes, the boots flapping off her feet, and the cloak sagging around her shoulders. In the mirror on his wall, she must have been the comical figure she cut for she giggled as she dashed across the room to the balcony. 

She yanked open the door as Roald reached it, and together they stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard. After glancing down to check that there was nobody below to be knocked out by the sled, he threw it onto the snow, where it landed with a muffled thud. Careful not to prick his palm on the mistletoe lining the balustrade or lose his grip on the ice coating it, Roald climbed over the railing, clutched a pillar in hands that were sweating in his gloves, and slid down until his boots hit the snow in an impact that shivered from his ankles to his thighs. 

He whistled like a turtledove to let Kally know it was safe to slip down and devoted himself to surveying his surroundings as he waited for her to join him. The snow around him was unmarred by any footprints, which he figured made sense since the courtiers were attending the festivities for the Tusaine ambassador, the servants were waiting on them, and all the court children except for him and Kally were abed. 

Roald almost felt sorry for spoiling the calm surface of the snow, which cackled under his feet like a wicked mage from a tale told in the nursery, as he and Kally walked up the slight incline—in spring and summer, a tiered flower garden—in the center of the courtyard to get a steeper angle for sledding. 

Since she was smaller and lighter even in the bulky winter clothes she had borrowed from him, he nodded for her to sit in the front. Her hands tightened around the rope, preparing to steer, as he charged onto the sled, clasping her waist as his momentum sped them down the slight incline. 

Adrenaline surged through Roald’s veins as the winter wind whistled in his ears during their descent, and he could feel his K’miri blood in his wild love of the cold and the snow. The chilly air sliced into his lungs, tore at his cheeks, and swept at his hair the way it did when he spurred his horse Shadow into a gallop. It was a freeing feeling Roald wished could last forever but that ended far too soon as they neared the stone walls circling the courtyard, and Kally pulled their sled to a halt. 

Wordlessly agreeing to try to capture that bliss again, they darted up the incline, Kally dragging the sled behind her. Three times they rode the sled down the incline without incident, but on the fourth descent, just as he had leapt onto the sled, pushing it into motion, Roald spotted four figures in satin dresses and robes shining in the orange light cast by the torches borne by two footmen. 

“Watch out, Kally,” hissed Roald as he realized that if they continued on their current trajectory, they would be on a collision course with one of the satin-clad figures, a woman whose stomach was the size of a stagecoach. 

“I can see as well as you,” Kally retorted, but obviously she couldn’t with the hat obscuring her vision because she hadn’t corrected their course yet. 

“Pull right!” Roald tried to shift his weight in the direction he wanted the sled to go, but Kally, who was still confused between her left and her right when she was flustered, undermined his efforts by turning the sled sharply left. 

“Your other right,” Roald said, but it was too late; they were barreling into the woman with the stagecoach for a stomach. As they slammed into her, knocking her into the snow, Roald recognized with a gasp that she was one of the new Tusaine ambassador’s wives, which explained why she was so rotund. Plumpness Roald had been told was seen as a mark of noble birth among Tusaine women, a sign that they were too exalted to ever exert themselves. 

The Tusaine ambassador for some reason that the tutors refused to explain to Roald no matter how many times he asked in different ways (they could be slippery as slugs when they didn’t want to respond to his questions) had two wives, and Roald couldn’t remember whether they had just sent flying the friendly one who sometimes shared sweets from her pockets or the one who seemed to hate all children on principle. 

“Forgive us, my lady,” Roald shouted to her as he and Kally toppled out of the sled. 

“My mistake,” chirped Kally, dusting the snow off her cloak as she shoved herself upright. “Steering is a bit harder than it looks.” 

Afraid that they were dealing with the irascible wife and that Kally’s cheeriness following this affront would result in a diplomatic disaster, he nudged her in the ribs as he stood beside her before her tongue could add more insult to injury. 

To his relief, the ambassador’s wife only laughed as two of the robed figures—one whose face was hidden in the dark and the other whom Roald knew to be the Tusaine ambassador—helped her regain her feet. Smiling indulgently down at Roald and Kally, she assured them, “All is forgiven, my dears. You remind me of my own precious children at home in Tusaine. I haven’t made a snow lady in years. Doing it makes me feel young again.” 

“Kally and Roald!” That was Mama’s voice—she must have been the fourth figure—and she sounded surprised, not that Roald could blame her. It wasn’t every night that they smashed a sled into an ambassador’s wife after all. “What in the name of all the Horse Lords are you doing?” 

“Sledding, Mama.” Crimson-cheeked not from the cold but from the shame of disgracing his family and country, Roald shuffled his boots in the snow, wishing he could melt like a snowflake falling on a warm hand. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” Mama’s fists were planted on her hips, and Roald winced. It was always an ominous omen when one of his parents posed a question with a clear answer about how they should have been behaving but plainly weren’t. 

Still he was duty-bound to respond truthfully, so he replied, “Yes, Mama.” 

“We were sleep-sledding, Mama,” Kally piped up, and Roald thought that if she was going to lie, she should have invented a less stupid-sounding one than that. 

“Sleep-sledding?” Mama arched an eyebrow as she often did when she was amused by one of her children’s antics but didn’t want to show it. Roald never provoked that reaction from her but Kally often did. He didn’t know if that was because he was heir (which made none of his misbehavior funny) or because he was too serious to have the charm of his younger siblings, especially Kally. Being the oldest he was always responsible whether he wanted to be or not. 

“Yes, Mama.” Kally bobbed her head with an enthusiasm that suggested her nonsense was perfectly logical. “We even had our eyes shut and everything.” 

“That explains the steering,” muttered Mama dryly. 

“Kalasin, it’s not a laughing matter.” That was Papa’s stern, scolding voice, and Roald saw he was the second man needed to help the ambassador’s wife to her feet. Kally’s nose wrinkled at the use of her full name as Papa’s reprimand went on undaunted, “You and Roald are meant to be in bed, not bowling over ambassador’s wives.” 

“We said we were sorry for knocking her over, Papa.” Kally’s chin thrust out in petulant defiance. “What more do you want from us?” 

“Go back to your rooms, change out of those wet clothes before you catch your death cold, and sleep.” Papa’s face forbade argument as he pointed toward the chambers he expected them to disappear into as soon as this lecture was over. “If I catch either of you sledding when you should be sleeping again, I’ll assign a nursemaid to you at night as if you were a squalling baby in a cradle. Now run along before the night is done.” 

“Yes, Papa.” Cowed at the threat of having a nursemaid in their bedrooms at night when only Lianne and Vania were young enough to still suffer that indignity, Roald and Kally bowed and headed back to their chambers. 

As they left the courtyard, Kally grumbled to Roald, “Kings ruin everything, even midnight sledding.” 

“Papa probably thought he was being merciful by just threatening and not actually punishing us.” Roald sighed. He wished he could feel grateful to his father for essentially letting them off with a warning but he just felt deflated, as if the enchantment had faded from the first snowfall. “It must be the Midwinter spirit in him.” 

“Don’t go turning into a king on me too, Roald.” Kally shot him an imploring glance as she entwined her arms through his. “That would ruin everything even more than Papa did.” 

“I’ll always be your big brother.” Roald teased his sister by pulling at her hair. Feeling the cold dampness of the snowflakes that were still lurking there, he touched some of the magic of the first snowfall again. “You’ll never stop being the little sister who leads me into trouble.” 

“You say that as if it were a bad thing.” Kally’s eyes twinkled like stars in the wintry sky as she stuck her tongue out at him. “All that trouble I get you into is fun, and you know it. Only imagine how boring your life would be without me.” 

“I don’t want to, Kally.” Roald shook his head since that was the simple truth. He couldn’t remember a time when his sister hadn’t been part of his life because he had only been a year old when she was welcomed into the world. He didn’t want to think about how many smiles and laughs he would lose if she had never been born. She was the magic in this snowfall and in so much else that made his life more than a duty. “I’d rather imagine us having more fun together even if that means more trouble.”


End file.
